


where you won't see any rising sun

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2015 [20]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angst, Character Death, Community: wishlist_fic, Dark, Grey Peter Hale, I probably missed half a dozen warnings, I'm Sorry, Loss, M/M, Mental Illness, Prompt Fic, Serial Killers, Violence, Werewolf Stiles Stilinski, murder spree, season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 15:51:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5503676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which bodies keep piling up, his nephew is suddenly sprouting claws, and Sheriff Peter Hale is tired of the whole mess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where you won't see any rising sun

**Author's Note:**

> For _peaceful fury_ , who asked for Stiles, _I find it kind of funny, i find it kind of sad, the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had_.
> 
> Okay. Long A/N: This was my favorite prompt by far this year and I spent the first week writing nothing but this because I _adore_ it, okay? And I hope you like it at least a little, because I had way too much fun writing this and you should. Because you gave me an awesome idea, okay? 
> 
> Secondly, this concludes this year's Wishlist from me. It's only been 20 days, but I don't think I've ever worked this hard on a Wishlist before. All the prompts were so involved and fantastic that I ran myself ragged trying to do them justice. Thank you. 
> 
> Also, +50k. Take that, NaNoWriMo.
> 
> Enjoy whatever holiday you celebrate. Pprfaith, over and out.

+

It’s not a long drive from Peter’s apartment to the burnt out house at the center of the preserve, but it seems longer in the dead of night, with Derek possibly dead on the other end of it and Stiles sitting beside Peter, his hands in his lap, claws rhythmically tapping against his thigh.

He’s too thin despite the power thrumming through his frame, and his cheekbones look fit to cut glass. He seems young, now that the scars have gone and the glow of his eyes, perpetually red, flickers like fire in the periphery of Peter’s vision.

Somehow, sometime in the last few weeks, Stiles has become the color of his eyes, to Peter. He thinks of the boy and he thinks red. This is Stiles and Stiles is red.

“If Derek is dead…” he starts, halfway down a service road in the dark. 

Stiles smirks, amused and bitter and too young. “You’ll kill me. I know.”

Peter’s grip on the wheel tightens.

+

Allison Argent is missing. 

Correction, Peter thinks, staring at the shapely, if somewhat pale and _dead_ legs in front of him. Allison Argent _was_ missing. 

Half of her still is, but that would be splitting hairs. Pun intended. Because this night cannot possibly get any worse. Getting off shift late and being called back in as soon as he walked through his front door, Allison Argent missing, parents up in arms, search the woods, whoops, found a body. 

Such a cliché, the young pretty college graduate, just returned from Berkley, found dead in the woods. 

Peter knew her. She went to school with Laura, was over at Talia’s for dinner often enough for him to know that the little ankh tattooed on her left ankle was something she got with her aunt on her eighteenth birthday. It looked better when she was alive. 

Laura is going to cry for days. 

With a sigh, he rubs a hand over his face, turns to his deputy, orders, “Get forensics up here. Keep everyone else going. We’re still missing half of her.”

The man nods, quiet, solemn. “Sir, are you sure…?”

Right. Lahey used to date dear Ally for a while, back in senior year. Before the tattoo, apparently. “Yes. Now get to work, so we can catch whoever did this and get them what they deserve.”

He wants to cringe at his own triteness, but people eat this sort of stuff up. Peter is Sheriff now. Meaningless but hopeful messages are expected. Even if he wants to shoot himself in the head every time they leave his mouth. Lahey, a puppy of a man, history of abuse, far too eager to please, nods, head ducked, and rushes off to do Peter’s bidding, tears in his eyes. Not cut out for this work. He became a cop to help people, to protect them from what was done to him. 

Should have become a social worker instead. 

With one last glance at the body, Peter takes off toward where he can see flashlights dancing in the distance, the rest of the search party looking for the rest of Allison. Her father is going to go ballistic. Maybe he should pick up Laura on the way over in the morning. Have her help. Break the news gently. She and the Argents can grieve together.

For now, something flashes between the trees and Peter thinks, for a second, _gotcha_ , only to be severely disappointed when, a moment later, his nephew more or less stumbles into his arms. His face looks blotchy, his eyes are too wide. He saw the body. Talia is going to rip Peter a new one, never mind that Derek is sixteen and followed his uncle out here all on his own.

Peter grabs the teen by the arm, hauls him around and toward the road a few hundred yards south without giving the boy a chance to so much as say ‘hello’. “Off you go, nephew. It’s way past your bedtime.”

“But Uncle Peter…!”

Such indignation. Such fire. 

“Don’t bother. How did you even find out about this?”

“I…,” silence. Derek has never been good with words, but he’s become downright taciturn since his darling girlfriend bit it last year. Ah, young love. Young loss. Better to get it out of the way early on, Peter thinks. Derek might disagree. 

“Well? I can’t read your mind. You’ll have to use your words.”

“I couldn’t sleep. So I went to see you at the station and I – “

“Overheard Olivia sending out the troops and thought you’d take a gander at your sister’s dead best friend’s body. Lovely, Derek. Truly.”

Derek wraps himself in a shroud of sulky silence and teenage angst. Peter has not had enough coffee for this. No-one has had enough coffee for this because there _is not_ enough coffee for this. Anywhere. He likes his family. He adores his sister and her three rugrats, even if Laura is barely ten years younger than him. He dotes on them. They love him. He likes that Derek comes to him with his troubles, that he can elicit more words from the boy in an hour than his parents or siblings in a week. 

But goddamn it, sometimes the kid is annoying. He’s sixteen. Shouldn’t he be over Paige by now and dipping his dick in something fresh? But no, midnight visits to the station are still a thing that happens at least once a week. Curse Talia for buying the kid a car and letting him use it to angst-stalk his uncle at all hours of the day. 

He lets go of Derek’s arm, sighs again – getting old there, Peter – and makes a shooing motion over the boy’s protests. “Get out of here. Now. Go home, Derek, or I will call your mother and tell her about this.”

For a beat he thinks he’s about to have a riot on his hands. But then the kid slumps, sinks back into his shallow pool of woe, turns tail and jogs off without another word. 

Peter makes a mental note to call Talia and tattle later. 

For now, body. 

Well, half of one. 

+

“Peter? Uncle Peter?”

Fuck. His. Life.

And fuck his decision to give Derek a key to his apartment because he will never not regret it. 

Peter cracks an eye open, glares at the alarm. Two pm. He got home at ten, shower, bed. Three and a half hours of sleep, maximum. And here his lovely nephew is, standing at the foot of his bed, looking – 

“What in God’s name happened to you?” he demands, sitting up straight, suddenly wide awake. Derek eeps at the fact that Peter is very obviously naked – he was _asleep_ \- and wavers in place. He’s pale and clammy looking, one hand pressed over his ribs. His eyes look… wrong. 

“Are you on something?”

“What? No. I….” He hesitates, starts, stops. Keeps doing that while Peter rolls out of bed, grabs a convenient pair of sweats and pads into the kitchen to start a caffeine drip for himself and possibly call an ambulance for his nephew. 

By the time the boy catches up, sits at the kitchen island and gathers his bearings, Peter is mostly awake. 

“Last night, in the woods,” Derek finally formulates. A proper English sentence. Talia and James must be so proud. “Something bit me.”

He raises up his shirt, peels back the alarmingly bloody bandage underneath and twists to show off his wound – which is nothing but a pale, silvery scar, shaped like two jagged half-moons. 

Things go downhill from there.

+

Allison Argent’s torso is found in a shallow grave next to the old Stilinski house, under a spiral of rope. Her parents are up in arms, the town is clamoring for a hanging and within a week, two more bodies are found, both cut in half with jagged, half moon injuries, like they were mauled by wild animals. 

Or a werewolf. 

Which sounds insane until Derek’s eyes turn a stunning gold for the first time in Peter’s living room and his eyebrows disappear into nothingness. 

Peter regrets life in general. 

+

“It’s your fault this is happening at all. You drew her here.”

“Sure, blame the victim,” Stiles snorts, an edge of fury in his voice. His eyes glow brighter, his teeth look longer. His hands have been tipped in dark claws for weeks now. He’s unfairly beautiful at the edge of becoming a wild thing for good. 

“Is that what you consider yourself to be, Stiles?” Peter asks, drumming his fingers against the armrest of his sinfully expensive leather furniture. It distracts the werewolf enough that he might just answer truthfully. 

“Semantics? Really?”

“I did consider becoming a lawyer once,” Peter allows with a little smirk. 

“Yeah?” Stiles mutters, mostly to himself. He seems to have no middle ground between homicidal alpha and sulky teenager. His body is twenty-two, but the mind inside, the pieces not devoured by madness, are only sixteen. The way he lounges on the sofa, boneless and tangled into himself, is far too reminiscent of Derek and Cora. “I always wanted to be a cop. Funny, huh?”

He’s killed half a dozen people in the past two month and didn’t even get to finish high school. The new skin where there were once only deep, twisted scars, looks pale as death.

Peter chuckles. “Not really.”

+

Derek sleeps even less, begs Peter not to tell his parents, scratches up the furniture and tries to kill his favorite uncle a time or two. 

Peter chains the brat down, teaches him to calm himself down when he gets pissy and doesn’t tell Talia only because he doesn’t have time for the inevitable blame coming his way. He’s trying to catch a serial killer, thank you very much. 

And if that means he has to deal with a newly skin hungry Derek crawling into his bed three to five times a week, well. The things he does for family, he muses, as his nephew snuffles into his neck, whining pathetically at another nightmare. 

“There’s blood,” he told Peter yesterday. “And fire. And screaming. I don’t know what’s happening to me, Peter.”

The second body was an insurance investigator and, for about thirty heart-stopping minutes, Peter thought Derek was the one who killed him. The third was a retired fire investigator. That in itself was a pretty obvious clue, but Derek dreaming of a house on fire, of people dying in agony, well. 

The doctors said it was a medical miracle that Stiles Stilinski survived the fire six years ago. Peter always felt something cold run down his spine when someone used the word ‘miracle’ in conjunction with the badly burned, crippled teenager in a coma.

There is nothing miraculous about that. 

And now, with Derek’s eyes shining brightly and bodies piling up, Peter repeats, quietly into his sleeping nephew’s mop of hair, “Nothing miraculous at all.”

+

The Stilinski clan was always something of a phenomenon in Beacon Hills. As long as anyone remembers, the family has been there, on that hill in the preserve, in that giant, old house. 

Talia went to school with Claudia, her little sister Melissa just two years younger. Both women married early. John took on Claudia’s last name, Melissa took Rafael’s. They spawned within months of each other. Stiles, the oldest, born in March, Scott following in August. There were four more children in the next few years, three girls and a boy, a nice symmetry, but Peter never even knew their names, or which kid belonged to whom.

Not until after the fire, when their names came with the pictures of charred little bodies attached. He thought of Derek, of Cora, and didn’t look closer. Sometimes, even Peter is a sentimental fool. 

Stiles and Scott had names and faces to him because Scott dated Allison before the fire and Allison was Laura’s friend. Full circle. 

Scott burned, too, and Allison was inconsolable. 

Five children, four parents, one set of grandparents. All dead. And Stiles, the loudest, weirdest, least liked of the bunch, the one with the strange eyes and the sharp tongue, was the only one who got out. 

Correction: Stiles was never in. Stiles was on an ice-cream run for his pregnant mother and came home to find everything he loved ablaze. The first responders had to knock him out to drag him away from the door he was trying to break down and by then, he was already suffering from fourth degree burns, right down to the bone. 

They say he _howled_ as his family burned. 

+

Stiles smirks, his eyes glow and elongated teeth catch on his lip. On Derek, the animalistic features looks puppyish. But Stiles, bathed in the emergency lighting of the parking garage looks anything but that. He is a sharp thing, this boy of ashes and bone.

He is something Peter could never afford to let himself become.

And he sees that Peter sees. 

Cocks his head to one side. His shirt, stolen, borrowed, something, slips off one bony shoulder. Peter’s gaze follows it down. 

“I could bite you, you know?”

“Oh?” he asks, rips his eyes from that tantalizing skin. “Is that so?”

The kid steps closer, grabs for Peter’s wrist with a speed unmatched by anything human. “It’s not like you could fight me.”

A moment later his nostrils flare. He laughs. “Oh, you like that, don’t you?”

“Consent,” Peter drawls, as slow and careless as he can, with a rabid animal at the gates. “You should look it up.”

“Yes, sir, Mister Sheriff, sir.” If he had a hand free, he would undoubtedly salute. His gaze drops to the sliver of skin between Peter’s sleeve and hand. “Would you enjoy being like me? A monster?”

Peter snorts. Does Stiles think it’s his fangs and claws that make him monstrous? Is he really that childish underneath? Does he believe one needs supernatural strength to kill, to maim, to destroy? The things that make monsters are not contagious. They never have been.

Something of that must show in his expression, because when he yanks on his arm, pulls his wrist free, the boy lets go with nothing but a delighted laugh.

+

It’s strange, to see a sixteen-year-old boy in the body of a man in his twenties. But that is what the kid is. He stopped at sixteen and only his grotesque, burned body kept going. Someone shaves him regularly. His jaw is smooth, his hair only millimeters long. Neat. His nails are trimmed. His shoulders are the breadth of a grown man’s, but there is barely any meat on them, perpetual gangliness emphasized by years of inactivity.

His eyes are open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Peter has read his file, knows his eyes are put down as brown, thinks what a gross understatement that is. They shine almost as golden as Derek’s do now.

Stiles has been in this bed six years. Has stared at that ceiling for six years. Has, to the best of Peter’s knowledge, been alone for six years. No-one visited him after the first few months. No-one could stand the sight of him. No-one to remember his real name, the convolution that looks like it can break tongues even on paper. 

Stiles. 

He’s only Stiles now, because there’s no-one left alive to know differently. It’s the kind of tragedy that demands a Hollywood ending, but Peter has always been a realist. 

Derek texted him earlier, _I think it wants me to kill with it._

He has taken to calling the one that bit him ‘it’. A defense mechanism, Peter recognizes. Stiles Stilinski is not an it. 

He sits next to the bed, knees bent for quick movement, every muscle taut. Playing, pardon the pun, with fire. 

“I understand the insurance guy, and the fire investigator. But I don’t understand why Allison Argent had to die. And I really don’t like the fact that you attacked my nephew in the woods. So tell me, what exactly is keeping me from putting a bullet in you right now?”

He doesn’t know what he expected, but not the stony, dead silence that follows. No reaction, not even a twitch. Not a muscle moves. 

If Peter Hale were anyone but who he is, he might start to doubt himself at this point. But he is, always and without compromise, himself. He leans back, faux relaxing, resigning himself to a one-sided conversation with a dramatic sigh.

“Of course, you know that was an empty threat. I can’t really justify shooting a coma patient, can I? I understand, in an abstract way, what you are doing. What must motivate you. The fire wasn’t an accident, was it? There is something far more sinister at play than I could ever figure out without knowing what you are. What your entire family was, I think. They were murdered for it, yes? And here you are, avenging them, finally, after all these years. A bit melodramatic, you have to agree, but I… I can’t honestly say that I wouldn’t do the same thing, in your position.”

Again, there is no reaction. 

So Peter dares to lean closer, dares to lower his voice and add, “Which is why I will give you a warning: keep my nephew out of this. The kid is too dumb to tie his shoe laces. There is nothing you can gain from terrorizing him. Do your deed, murder the guilty ones, but stay away from everyone else and do. Not. Touch. Derek Hale. Because if you do, I will find a way to kill you.” He pauses. Adds, “Fire seems to work.”

It might just be his imagination, but Peter thinks Stiles’ mouth moves, a fraction of an inch, just a twitch. Something that could be either a grin, or a snarl. Hard to tell. Coma patients. So unexpressive. 

+

Peter has never been typical cop material. He spent his teens fucking up everything and everyone he could get his hands on, played mind-games, manipulated people into doing all sorts of dumb shit for him. 

It came naturally, twisting, pulling, tugging, until people fell into line, not even noticing what he’d done. He called them sheeple and felt himself the big, bad wolf. Oh, the irony.

It was all fun and games, until a little carelessness, a little too much pride almost got Laura killed. She was only six at the time, adored her uncle and when he was annoyed with her and sent her on a fool’s errand in the woods to be rid of her, she got lost and almost drowned. 

Talia was furious, James threatened to kick him out of the house and Laura flinched around him for months on end. 

Peter doesn’t care about a lot, but he cares about family. He _loves_ his family. The guilt, a strange, new feeling, made him sloppy and another little game came back to haunt him. The fallout ended with a knife in his thigh and a whole lot of trouble. Ennis always did have a temper problem.

He came to a decision, that night. Power is fun. Manipulating people is fun. Doing what you want is fun. But Peter as he was, sixteen, human, fragile and alone, couldn’t keep it up. Maybe if he’d been older, stronger, more powerful. 

Maybe, his mind whispers now, if he’d been _wolf_. But he wasn’t. He thought he was, but now there are literal wolves in the woods and he knows better. Peter has the unfortunate luck of having been born human. Claws and fangs would have suited him perfectly, but alas, some things are not meant to be. Some rocks are better left unturned. He shudders, trying to imagine himself with the kinds of weapons Derek now has at his disposal. The kid doesn’t know what to do with what he was given but Peter, oh, Peter does. 

Peter _would_ , is the problem. He always, always would.

Already, the temptation is hard to resist.

All it would take to make Derek into a weapon, to make him Peter’s loyal guard dog – in more sense than one, would be a little shove, a little twist. The tiniest nudge - 

But he made a choice, so long ago. To not use his sociopathic tendencies for evil, because it would get his family hurt, would get _him_ hurt. And what kind of narcissist would he be if that were permissible? 

Not twenty years later, he is Sheriff. 

Talia is so proud. 

But Peter looks at the footage of an enormous, towering monster ripping a video store clerk to shreds with no more effort than it takes Peter to blow his nose, and he _wonders_. 

+

It takes a few more murders, but eventually Derek, with the help of Lahey, of all people, figures out what Peter has known since body number three. 

“I think Stiles Stilinski is the alpha,” he says, crouched low beneath the empty window of an abandoned building. Outside, Chris Argent is sneaking around, a gun in each hand, shooting at anything that moves.

He already hit Derek in the arm and there is something black and viscous dripping from the wound. Peter would dearly like to have a word with the man about both that, and his newly discovered homicidal tendencies, but he’s off duty and didn’t have time to grab his gun from the car when they had to abandon it. He doesn’t think his badge alone is enough to make Chris stop and listen at this point. 

“Yes,” Peter hisses, “obviously. Now _shut up_.”

Outside, Chris is giving a grand speech about putting the monster that killed his daughter down like an animal and even though he never says the word, Peter is positive the man knows about werewolves. See also: black sludge. 

Which puts a whole new spin on why dear Ally is dead. Interesting. 

Derek blinks startled eyes at him. “But how did you – “

“Jesus fuck, there is a hunter out there, shut up already,” a new voice announces and before Peter can place it, hands wrap around his wrist and Derek’s elbow and drag them away from the window.

Derek struggles and Stiles shoots him a poisonous look. “I’m trying to save your life, idiot. Move.”

When the boy starts to get a mulish set to his face, Peter shoves him into the older werewolf and follows on his own when Stiles has to release him. They head downstairs and into the sewers, then break into a run, away from Argent and his poisonous bullets. 

Stiles seems to know exactly where he is going and since he seems keen on having Derek in his, what, pack? – with him, somehow, at least, Peter is willing to go along for now. 

Eventually, they climb up a ladder and end up in… is that the animal clinic? Stiles moves around like he knows the place, putting Derek on the table, fetching paper towels to mop up the alarming amounts of black blood seeping out of the boy.

“What’s happening to me?”

Stiles snorts, burn scars twisting his face into something unpleasant as he does. “Congratulations, you have been poisoned with wolfsbane. If I don’t fix it in the next twelve hours or so, you’ll die. Painfully. Not fun. Now hold still.”

He takes one last swipe at the injury, then suddenly grows claws on one hand and plunges a single digit into the wound channel. When Derek screams, he simply presses down on his shoulder and holds him in place, apparently not caring about the pain he’s causing.

A moment later, the bullet _plinks_ onto a surgical steel tray and Stiles holds out a hand to Peter. “Lighter,” he demands, even as he lets go of Derek, who slumps, whimpering, eyes glowing gold. 

Peter sneers. “I don’t smoke.”

An eye roll. The alpha wolf steps back, sniffs the air, goes for a high cabinet and comes back with a jar full of powdery substance. He pours some onto his palm, hisses as steam immediately rises. No, not steam. Smoke, from where the herb is burning his skin. The smell, mixed with a heavy tinge of Derek’s blood, is nauseating. 

He sniffs it again, looks at the bullet critically, then shrugs and slaps the powder right onto Derek’s wound, rubbing it in cruelly. When the boy tries to yank himself free of the pain, screaming again, Stiles stills him with a claw to the jugular and turns to Peter again, hand out. His eyes are redredred. “You’re a stress smoker. It’s all over you. Give me your lighter or your precious boy dies.”

Peter, torn between fascination and shooting the little punk dead, obeys, half knowing what comes next. Guessing

Stiles sets the herb on fire over the sound of Derek’s babbled pleas, grinds the ashes into the wound, ignores the stench of sickness and scalded flesh that rises from the wound.

A moment later, all that’s left is a pale, sooty scar. 

“Word of advice,” Stiles tells Derek over the boy’s whimpers, “don’t get fucking shot by hunters.”

+

“Has dear Kate gotten here yet?” he asks, later, slouching in Peter’s living room like he didn’t break in and wake the man from a dead sleep. Somehow Peter thinks he should have been expecting this. But he wasn’t. 

Generally speaking, serial killers don’t tend to want to hang around law enforcement officers all that much. Much less break into their apartments.

“Argent?” 

The answering yes is more hiss than speech, a sibilant sound of hate and rage. 

“Is that why you killed Allison? To draw her aunt here?”

The kid sighs like Peter is the dumbest human being he has ever met. Shakes his head. “It’s a useful side effect, let’s say. Only Kate. Isn’t. Biting. Such a bad aunt, don’t you think? Her niece gets cruelly murdered and she doesn’t come running. Pathetic, especially for a family of hunters.”

“I take it she was the one to murder your family.”

“Murder? That wasn’t murder. Murder is taking down a rogue omega and getting rid of the evidence. That was a slaughter. She drugged everyone in the house, blocked all the exits, and set them on fire. My youngest sister was three. She was human. My mom was pregnant. Scott…” he trails off, eyes shining with tears instead of rage for once, jaw set against more words spilling out. “She slaughtered everything I loved.”

“And you took Allison in return.”

“No,” he barks, loud as a gunshot. “I’m not the monster that kills someone’s family to get to them. I’m not _her_. I liked Allison, I did.” He hums, thoughtful, distracted by his own narration. “She was a real life fucking Disney princess and she loved Scotty. As much as he loved her. Except when he told her the big secret, when he revealed us all to her, what did she do? What _did she do_?”

He sneers. “She swore not to tell and then scampered off to Aunt Kate and told her. All of it. Who was human, who wasn’t, the hiding places, the basement, the – everything.”

“She didn’t know her family hunts werewolves, did she?” 

Stiles’ shoulders rise. “No. But she swore to keep our secret. And it’s not like we didn’t warn her that her family had a long history of murdering us. We put our trust in her. I wouldn’t even have known, but she came to me, once, after the fire. Told me everything. How she betrayed us, how Kate asked way too many questions, what she did. Poor little Ally, couldn’t take the guilt. Got early admission to Berkley and never came back until this summer. She was the last person to ever visit me.” He quirks a grin, off-beat and off-kilter. “I liked Ally. She was sweet.”

“And yet you ripped her body in half and left it in the woods.”

Stiles shrugs again, hands out, what can you do? “It’s how Argents like to leave dead wolves. I thought it was poetic. Symbolic, you know? But then, I never got to finish school, so what do I know.”

+

“Your sister,” Peter says, slipping into the chair across from Chris Argent. It’s early, the diner is mostly empty and the hunter looks like he hasn’t slept since Allison disappeared.

“What about her?”

“The alpha wants her.”

It’s interesting, always has been to Peter, watching people react to shocking news. Few do it the way Chris Argent does, gracefully and utterly silent. His hands still around his coffee cop, his shoulders tense, his eyes start scanning the room without ever really leaving Peter’s face. 

Peter, who laughs. “Don’t worry, he’s not here.”

Chris turns those lovely blue eyes on him fully. His focus burns. Across the room, Derek tries and fails to appear engrossed in the morning’s newspaper. Peter would have left him at home, but he’s afraid of what the boy does when unsupervised.

Correction: he’s afraid of what Stiles would do _to_ the boy. 

The alpha has been ‘missing’ from the hospital for a week and when he hasn’t been out, killing people, he has spent way too much time in Peter’s apartment, calmly and competently teaching Derek about being a wolf in between of bouts of raging madness. 

“What do you know?” the hunter asks, question like a whip across the table. 

Peter sighs. When did his life become so dramatic?

“I know that the Stilinski fire was not an accident and that the last living member of the pack wants revenge. I know that Kate held the matches. I know he won’t stop killing until she’s dead, so please, get her here so we can finally get this over with, will you?”

“Are you proposing I sacrifice my sister to the monster that killed my daughter?” 

Why yes, he is. Because this whole mess is a danger to any werewolf in this town and Derek counts as one of them now. Also, this town? Is Peter’s town and has been for years. He’d like for the killing to stop, thanks a lot, and it won’t until either Stiles is dead or his vendetta carried out. Possibly both.

“I’m proposing a final showdown. You provide Kate, Stiles will show up. As long as the killing stops afterwards, I don’t really care who wins.” He shrugs openly. 

The older man studies him, brows narrowed. Takes a sip of his coffee, studiously composed. Last year he buried his wife, last week his daughter. Peter knows better than to take his eyes off him, especially with that expression on his face. 

“You know,” Chris eventually says, almost friendly, “I always thought you were one of the good ones. But that’s not entirely right, is it?”

Peter grabs the mug Chris puts down, takes a sip. The coffee is cold from too much milk and far too sweet. Unexpected. “I do good things,” he counter, agrees, _something_. “I protect this town.”

Everything else is details, really. 

Across the room, Derek ruins the ruse completely by flinching like someone hit him. 

Chris chuckles at the boy’s poor attempt at being covert, then stares Peter in the eye for an uncomfortably long time. “You’re not a wolf,” he observes.

“No.”

“Derek is.”

“Derek is sixteen.” And because he can, “So was Stiles when your darling sister set him on fire.”

“My daughter was twenty-two.”

Peter waits.

“Kate was tied up in Chicago. She’ll be here within the week. To pay her respects.”

“With a shotgun, I assume.”

They smile at each other in grim understanding. 

It’s hunting season. 

+

Surprising fact: the homicidal maniac Peter has been forced to share breathing space with lately is bilingual. 

He comes home after a late shift – another body, thank you, Stiles – to find his nephew asleep on the sofa, Stiles perched over him like a neon-eyed gargoyle. For a moment, Peter thinks he miscalculated in letting Stiles live long enough to teach Derek the ways of the werewolf. Thinks his plan to let Stiles and the Argents wipe each other out is going to fall through because Stiles is breaking his promise and hurting Derek. 

Then he notices Derek’s squirming and the low, hurt animal noises he’s making. 

A nightmare. 

And Stiles, crouched over him, grotesque in his inability to fully revert to human form, quietly singing a lullaby in an unfamiliar language. Slavic.

“Polish,” he whispers, later, when Derek has settled down into dreamless sleep. “My mom used to sing it when us kids had nightmares. Scott never had a head for languages, but I loved learning, if only so I could talk to her without anyone else understanding.” He flutters his lashes, gaze red. “I inherited her eyes.”

Then he smiles gently around a mouth full of fangs, stroking a careful knuckle down Derek’s cheek. Peter, who is never sure if Stiles is saying these things to manipulate him or to remind himself, snaps, “Don’t touch him.”

Stiles’ expression turns back to more familiar territory as he jeers something in Polish, sibilant and sharp.

+

Kate Argent arrives in town. With a shotgun. 

And half a dozen goons, but it’s the shotgun that makes Peter giggle uncontrollably for a full five minutes when Derek tells him.

The Argents gear up for war. 

Stiles kills the last accomplice on his list, one of Derek’s teachers, and Peter is called to the scene. There is a smiley face, drawn in blood and claw marks, smeared along one wall. 

Cheeky fucker.

When he gets home, his living room is ripped to shreds and Derek is gone.

He calls Chris even as he starts emptying his gun safe onto the bed, mentally calculating bullets. “That was not part of the deal.”

Chris doesn’t even bother denying it. “You let him bond with the kid, Hale. You let them bond. What did you think we would do?”

+

Peter is dimly aware that it’s only surprise that gets him the upper hand, but he does manage to slam Stiles up against the wall and wedge an arm under his chin. 

“You knew they would take him!” he snarls and for a moment, he is feral as the alpha.

Then Stiles rips Peter’s arm from his throat, twists it to the breaking point behind his back and hauls him in with his free hand, claws dancing along his jugular. Their faces are millimeters apart and Peter strains, every inch of him taut, and can’t move at all. 

“I could force Derek’s loyalty,” Stiles drawls, almost amused at Peter’s rage. “But you’re human, Peter. Of course I knew. You could say I was counting on it. And now that we’re all properly motivated, how about we kill some Argents?”

He loosens his grip, almost as if to let Peter go, but hauls him back in at the last moment, bites at his lips. Kissing him with the finesse of a teenager and the rage of an animal. 

Peter kisses him back anyway. Right before he socks him in the jaw. 

Stiles laughs.

+

“Do you ever sleep?” he asks, one night, between Allison and Harris, when he comes home at three am and finds the alpha werewolf has once more broken in and is amusing himself with Peter’s book collection. Derek is at home, for once. 

“Sometimes,” Stiles drawls. This is early days. His eyes still turn back to gold. In the warm light of the reading lamp, he looks impossibly young. The expression on his face is old, though, wry and worn. Nightmares, it says. 

Peter, too tired for the emotional upheaval of a serial killer trying to make him care, shrugs and turns to collapse into his bed. 

“I dream sometimes,” Stiles whispers, just before Peter reaches the bedroom door. For some unfathomable reason he stops, listens. “I dream that mom didn’t crave peanut butter and double mint chocolate ice-cream at midnight and that I’m in bed, asleep. I dream that I die with them.”

The sounds of a book closing, a window opening. “Those are the best dreams I’ve had in six years.”

By the time Peter turns back, the room is empty. 

+

He leaves the hunters to Stiles, sneaks away before they reach the house and down into a system of tunnels the alpha could only describe to him. 

Good enough. He finds Derek in one of the main rooms of the system, strung up to a piece of wire fence, hooked up to a car battery. The boy is pale, sickly looking and has the remnants of a dozen cuts dripping down his chest. Torture.

If Peter couldn’t hear the roaring of a wolf and the gunshots and dying screams of the hunters above them, he’d be doing some murder himself tonight. He’s Sheriff. He knows where to dump a body so it’s never found. 

As he rouses Derek to something close to coherency, the screams taper off, one by one by one, until whatever Stiles is doing grows too quiet to be heard. Is he dead already? Or has he killed the Argents and their hangers-on?

He slings Derek’s arm over his shoulders, wishes the boy were a bit skinnier, and starts steering them back to the hidden exit he came through. 

As soon as they hit fresh air, the fight becomes audible again. Voices. Screams. Howls. The car is several hundred yards away and Peter isn’t done here yet. He drags his cargo toward a bundle of nearby shrubs and shoves Derek into it. “Stay put,” he orders, repeats it when it looks like the boy isn’t listening. “Derek, do you hear me? Stay there until I come for you. And be quiet, for God’s sake.”

He gets a dazed nod. Good enough. Good boy. 

Then he races uphill. He finds the first body just before the house becomes visible, pauses only long enough to pick up the man’s gun. There is no point checking for a pulse. Most of his stomach and chest is ripped open.

With his free hand, he goes digging through the bag of emergency supplies he brought, in case Derek was in worse shape than he is. His fingers close around several little glass bottles.

Stiles didn’t just use Derek to make Peter come. He also used the boy to make Peter angry, because there is one thing, only one thing, Peter cannot abide. And that is endangerment of his family. In that aspect, he and the alpha are frighteningly alike. Stiles knows that. 

In fact, Peter thinks as he climbs the last few feet and finds himself in what must once have been a yard, the burnt-out shell of the Stilinski house looming above him, he might have counted on it. 

There are more bodies strewn about like rag dolls. Chris Argent stands to one side, weapon in hand, but not firing. It’s too late anyway. Stiles has transformed into something altogether inhuman, black and sparsely furred, seven feet tall and twisted into something more sixties-horror-movie than werewolf. 

He’s on his hind legs, arms spread, roaring his triumph to the world, Kate Argent at his feet, choking on her own blood. Peter has only met her a time or two, when Laura and Allison were still kids, but he always thought she was pretty, in a dangerous sort of way. 

Now she’s just pathetic. 

She clutches at her throat, gasps, gurgles, dies. 

And just like that, Stiles is a boy again, human limbs streaked with dirt and blood. He’s done. He’s done. 

“It’s over,” he tells Chris, like murdering the man’s sister was a business transaction. He even smiles as he says it, open and relieved. He’s done. 

Chris raises his gun but Peter, Peter has been waiting for this moment. 

Peter has been waiting for this for weeks. 

Stiles catches the first bottle, and the second, but he has no hands left for the third and the fight has taken too much out of him for any more heroics. The last Molotov starts a chain reaction and within seconds, the other two have exploded as well and Stiles Stilinski dies in fire for the second time.

His roar turns into a howl and then an entirely human scream.

Chris stares, at Stiles, at Peter, at Stiles again, looking shell-shocked and lost. His entire family is dead and now Peter stole his vendetta, too. 

Eventually, Stiles goes quiet. 

His ragged breathing is still loud, but compared to his screams, it’s ringing silence. Behind Peter, Derek, on his hands and knees, gives a quiet sob. 

Stupid boy. He didn’t need to see this. 

Peter moves as Chris starts to, gets there first. Crouches above the burnt boy. Stiles’ eyes are still red. “Thank you,” the alpha says, “For letting me have this.”

Because they both know Peter could have done this weeks ago. He always knew fire kills werewolves. He shrugs, considers a dozen possible responses. Among them, _I only let you do it to make this town safe for my nephew_ , and, _this was your intention all along_. 

He says nothing, for once, just stands, draws the dead hunter’s gun. Wolfsbane bullets. He checked. 

Stiles smiles again and for a moment, just one, Peter lets himself wonder at all the things this boy could have been.

Then he shakes it off. It doesn’t matter now.

Stiles nods at him, just once, eyes dimming from bright red to dirty brown. Old blood. Peter aims for his forehead.

“Sweet dreams,” he says and pulls the trigger. 

+

_“Are you sure you don’t want me to run into town and get you that ice-cream, Mom?”_

_“Oh, goodness, yes. Darling boy, you have school tomorrow and it’s almost midnight. I’ll survive without the ice-cream. Besides, I think there’s still pickles left.”_

_“Oh, gross. Night, Mom. Love you.”_

_“Good night, Stiles. I love you, too.”_

+

+

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumble with me one last time.](wordsformurder.tumblr.com)


End file.
